- This topic has 4 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 1 week, 1 day ago by
.
-
Posts
-
-
Secrecy, deception, and truth-telling all shape the characters’ relationships. How do the characters’ hidden pasts and double lives affect their relationships? Whose hidden pasts or double lives do you think had the biggest impact on the Briar Club?
-
I think that Grace has the greatest impact on the Briar Club. It really would not have existed if she hadn’t worked from the premise that “what Mrs. Nilsson doesn’t know won’t hurt her.” Eventually, she gets Mrs. Nilsson to agree with some changes in the house–flowers in vases and kitchen window box and suncatchers.
Grace sees potential. Her favorite occupation is observing people. She has “an easy listening air as she welcomed other people’s life stories,” but said little about herself. That was something Nora appreciated because she didn’t talk about her family. Nevertheless, everyone seemed to know one of Nora’s secrets because of the chinchilla wrap and how often she stayed overnight with “family.” Nora wants to be more like Grace–self-contained and self-sufficient. Grace’s listening provides Nora with incentive to cut ties with her family and Xavier. Grace provides Pete with a better role model than Mike Hammer by providing him with a copy of The Three Musketeers. She tells Reka to try happiness. Grace is the most invasive when she opens Fliss’ locked door with a hairpin and decides that Fliss needs a night out without Angela whom Nora is babysitting. Grace tells Fliss to go back to nursing because that Fliss is more interesting. Grace and Fliss are instrumental in getting Lina the glasses that her mother refuses to buy. It is Grace who keeps Bea from being kicked out of Briar House for picking all the ripe tomatoes. Grace’s advice to Claire is that she and Stretch should move a lot the first year and avoid staying in the same place longer than three or four weeks. Grace reads people and knows what solution their secrets need.
-
Definitely agree with Nancy about Grace and her impact on the Briar Club. I think that is most evident in their surprise and disbelief when they learn Grace’s past and secret. Grace has been their confidant, counselor and advocate, roles in which they trusted her. Clearly, the possibility that Grace could have had another identity, one as sinister as Russian spy, never entered their minds even as individual women remarked at times how little they knew of Grace other than from her time at the Briarwood House.
In some ways, everyone has secrets and a past that is not shared or only entrusted to a best friend. Every woman in the Briar Club has a past that shapes her. But only Grace seems to me like she had a double life, one that she shared only when she had no choice. It did not occur to me that the papers she kept hidden under her bed were stolen secrets from Lockheed Martin. And, in the end, Grace continues to lead a double life; she can only send “Hammerin’ Pete” an unsigned postcard.
-
Just as with the tyranny aspect, it seems to me many of the relationships in the book are affected by secrecy and deception! Some of the women have a hard time trusting other people. Reka keeps it a secret that she’s a talented artist and her trips to New York. The women in Briar House don’t really get to know her that well until she gets her sketches back and is able to put her past behind her. After that she makes stronger connections with them.
Nora doesn’t trust Xavier at first. She tries to keep the relationship a secret from her workplace. I’m a bit confused at the end of the story as to whether or not she has reignited that relationship but is keeping it a secret?
Claire’s hidden relationship with Sydney definitely has an impact on the Briar Club because it precipitates Harland Sutherland’s demise! I think it has almost a bigger impact than Kirill’s death because Grace is forced to look after Arlene and leave Briar House. But overall, I agree with you both Nancy and Jane. Grace has the biggest secrets and biggest double life. Her actions weave all the other ladies’ lives together in some way. It’s fun that even though she has the biggest, darkest secret, the impact she has on her friends is life-affirming and positive.
-
Wonderful insights from everyone about Grace. She was by far my favorite character in the book. I think Kate Quinn relays the secrets really well throughout the plot. She always seems to give even her most honest characters secrets that ratchet up the intrigue and suspense. I haven’t really more to add other than I enjoyed all of the characters’ secrets and particularly liked how Reka’s secret with Sydney and the Fliss’ secret with Sydney lead to Claire’s secret with Sydney and so on. The secrets were all interwoven so well!
-
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.